Last week, Matthew Hutchison, Senior Director, Product Marketing for Salesforce Marketing Cloud, and Jim Eup, Principal Product Marketing Manager Salesforce Marketing Cloud, kicked off the first webinar of the Marketing Cloud Webinar Series with "Journey Builder for Apps: Bring the Customer Journey to Life with Marketing Cloud". In the webinar Jim and Matthew talk about the current mobile app industry and walk us through how a customer of Salesforce Marketing Cloud like Kimpton Hotels, a niche boutique hotel, could use Journey Builder to create unique journeys for their customers.

The Mobile App Industry

One of the things brands like Kimpton Hotels understand is that mobile apps are changing everything. The way we use our banks, purchase tickets, travel, and more is changing to be easier, faster, and more convenient. Today, the average smartphone user has 25 apps on their phone, a trend that we believe will continue to grow. There are 2.2 million apps currently available on iTunes and the Google Play Store (Apple and Google), every second 16,000 apps are being downloaded, and in 2013 102 million apps were downloaded worldwide (Gartner).

The issue with the app world is attrition - 20 percent of apps are used only once according to Localytics and 60 percent will be removed from the phone before being used 10 times. So it is important to think about how you are going to communicate to your customers in this new app-centric world. And in order to create a high level of engagement with each of your customers, you need a tool like the Marketing Cloud to put your customer at the center of everything.

Kimpton Hotels + Journey Builder

Jim and Matthew walked us through an example customer journey including:

• Acquire/Booking: Kimpton Hotels has a Facebook Ad with the goal of getting people to book a stay. Tricia asks her friends on Facebook where she should stay in San Francisco and clicks on a Kimpton Facebook advertisement, which leads her to their mobile website. She browses local attractions and decides to make the reservation on her phone.
• Pre-arrival: Kimpton Hotels sends an email to customers three days before their trip with the goal of getting them to make a reservation at the hotel restaurant. Tricia skipped this offer and did not open the email.
• 2^nd Pre-arrival: Kimpton Hotels sends a second email with a stronger CTA for customers that did not open the previous email the day of their trip with the goal of getting them to make a reservation at the hotel restaurant. Tricia books a reservation and downloads the mobile app (because it was easy).

For more details on the Kimpton Hotels customer journey watch the full 30-minute webinar here:

And if you're just interested in flipping through the slide deck available here.

Ready to start down the path to successful customer journey management? Request a demo or download The Path to Lifecycle Marketing Success for our recommendations on how to map out your customer journeys.

Register for other webinars in the Marketing Cloud Webinar Series as we dive into customer journey mapping and the importance of building a cohesive customer journey.